"Iím interested in Hitman as a character in the larger DCU, and 'the area of Gotham so bad that Batman doesnít go there,' because Batman is a dude that has paid multiple visits to a planet literally called Apokolips."

Hitman is a Cult Classic comic book series written by popular and controversial writer Garth Ennis of Preacher and Punisher fame and drawn by frequent Ennis collaborator John McCrea, starring Tommy Monaghan. It had its origins in the 1990sDark Age-tastic Bloodlines Crisis Crossover, where aliens invaded Earth to murder human beings and drain their spinal fluids. Which somehow gave the few survivors superpowers in the process. It was easily forgettable, and the cast of Nineties Anti-Hero equally so. Bloodlines was meant to profit off the Dark Age phenomenon by creating a new batch of "heroes" for the era, because, after all, Darker and Edgier sells, doesn't it?

A former Marine and professional hitman, Tommy hangs out in the Cauldron, the poor Irish district of Gotham City. He frequents a bar with his buddies and father figure. During the Bloodlines crossover, in The Demon Annual vol. 3 #2 (1993), Tommy survived an encounter with one of the invading Alien knockoffs and gained two abilities: X-Ray Vision and Telepathy. Both powers prove to be rather handy to a man of his profession.

With these, a lot of guns, and a loyal band of friends, Tommy's contracts will always set him off on insane adventures one can expect in a colourful world like the DCU, but this being a Garth Ennis piece there's always a darkly humourous and satirical bent. What other comic can you read about hitmen fighting zombie baby seals, two headed mafiosos, Ricean vampire pansies, gun-demons, dinosaurs, Eldritch Abominations, the Justice League, Batman and Lobo?

The Hitman solo series lasted for 61 issues, running from April, 1996 to April, 2001. This series is chock full of Ennis' signature trademarks, yet it also emanates his signature subtle compassion. In a series that mostly exists to thrive on the Rule of Cool, it can be surprisingly humane, compassionate, tragic and heartwrenching. This is primarily because Hitman is a victim of Cerebus Syndrome, but it never lost its sense of humor or fun, even past the turning point of the syndrome.

Author Tract: It's a Garth Ennis work. Superheroes are dicks who can't empathize with regular Joes, corporations suck, immigration themes, there's more to people than you think, you shouldn't look down on the lower class, etc. But Ennis shows that Tropes Are Not Bad.

Background Joke: The old German tank Tommy and his friends commandeer in northern Africa has graffiti suggesting it was the one Teigel's grandfather served in during World War II.

Badass: Tommy himself. And any major character who frequents Noonan's, including the bartender Noonan himself. Catwoman. Deborah. Etrigan. Quite frankly, it's a World of Badass. Half the Badass Index can be integrated into this story.

The Badass Index put out a second volume recently. It was called "Ringo Chen."

Badass Grandpa: Sean Noonan. How else can you describe a man who casually mows down a Tyrannosaurus-Rex with a BFG and remarks to his chef-cum-co-bartender; "I think we just solved our sandwich shortage."

Benito Gallo is a villainous example.

Badass Normal: Almost everyone in the main cast. Tommy himself can even count since he rarely uses his two powers in combat, and he can barely hold his own in a fist fight against any remotely competent combatant. And yet, Tommy rakes a higher body count than most Horror Movie Villains.

Biting-the-Hand Humor: Ennis loved mocking whatever was new at DC. His Crisis Crossover contributions center on the characters talking about how stupid the whole thing is, both Mullet Superman and Superman-Blue were treated as downright blasphemous, and whenever Ennis brought up other characters who debuted in Bloodlines, they were dismissed as pathetic losers ("OH MY GOD, I TURNED MY ASS INTO A HAND GRENADE—").

Captain Ersatz: Night-Fist. Take one good look at his costume. I wonder whom he's meant to parody.

More obscurely, Scarback, the T-Rex in the dinosaurs arc seems to be one for Satanus, a similar T-Rex that appeared in a spinoff series in 2000AD after turning up in a Judge Dredd storyline.

Car Fu: If there's something in the way, and Natt the Hatt's behind the wheel, you can bet this will happen.

Combat Pragmatist: Tommy, natch. Arguably the worst hand to hand fighter in the series, yet he makes up for it with Improbable Aiming Skills. To paraphrase what he said to Sean after killing a pot dealer in his youth, having used a gun for the first time and killed a man for the first time, "I ain't Going Toe-to-Toe with Bonko Finneran when I can take him from ten feet away."

What do you do if you're facing a genetically-engineered gunslinger who can draw shoot and holster, then grab the lighter he just had in his hand before it falls more than a few inches? Have your buddy shoot him from behind, of course.

The Comically Serious: Batman, whenever he shows up. The bit in the second issue where Tommy pukes on his shoes is a sight to behold.

Crisis Crossover: Lampshaded by the characters, who are often a bit perturbed how big, world-shattering events seems to occur like clockwork once a year but everything goes right back to normal once they're over.

Tommy and the gang protect the Cauldron during No Man's Land, and wax nostalgic during Final Night.

Etrigan, Green Lantern, Catwoman, Superman, and Batman all show up at various times.

The leader of the vampire coven in the "Dead Man's Land" arc also appeared in Ennis's run on Hellblazer.

Kathryn McAllister from the final arc, "Closing Time," is the same woman as Kathryn O'Brien from Ennis's run on Punisher. (In her final appearance, she talks about her past relationships, including "that stupid bastard Tommy.") In ''The Punisher: Up is Down, Black is White" it's mentioned that one of O'brien's aliases is McAllister

Dwindling Party: As the series continues, the gang of Noonan's Bar slowly deceases one by one, until the final arc "Closing Time" that starts with just Tommy, Natt and Hacken of the originals left. Two out of those three don't make it to the end.

Expy: As is somewhat standard in Garth Ennis works, we get a few, most of them resembling characters from the concurrently running Preacher..

We get brief glimpses of an incarnation of death who looks very much like an East Asian version of the Saint of Killers.

Bueno Excellente bears some broad similarities to Freddy, one of the "sexual investigators."

Tommy is one, to some extent, for Cassidy. Both are young men of Irish ancestry who gain superpowers by being attacked by parasitic creatures, both wear sunglasses to disguise their unusual eyes, and (given Tommy's rocky relationship with Teigel and his past in Desert Storm) both are portrayed as sometimes weak and naive. Tommy is overall a much better, stronger person than Cassidy, however.

Grievous Harm with a Body: In Tommy's first appearance in another series, Etrigan, a Crazy Awesome rhyming demon, gets into a fight with an obese alien parasite. In the ensuing battle(which happens to take place at the funeral of a mob boss that the alien parasite had killed earlier), Etrigan initiates combat by bludgeoning the alien with the corpse. Yes, you read that correctly. On top of that, the corpse's head flies off when it hits the alien.

Groin Attack: Teigel's reaction to one of Tommy's attempts to get back together after he cheated on her. He should count himself lucky — her reactions to two other attempts resulted in her punching him out and leaving him for an elephant to urinate on, and persuading him to strip naked before locking him in a small room with only a lion for company.

Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: While Tommy and his friends are crack shots who can routinely score head-shots from dozens of feet away, the Mooks they end up fighting can barely manage to scratch them with thousands of rounds of ammunition. Frequently, Tommy and the boys merely stand behind some cover (like a wooden bar or church) and easily fend off dozens of men charging at them with guns blazing.

This is lampshaded by a mook who comments that giving a gun and a suit to a guy recruited from the street doesn't automatically make him a competent enforcer.

Informed Ability: The SAS soldiers are presented as more badass than anyone in the series, and when confronting them Tommy and Natt can only run away or get really, really lucky. But in the "blow away a whole bunch of guys at once" department, they're not discernibly better than Tommy, Natt, or several other characters.

Insecure Love Interest: Tommy ends his relationship with Tiegel once and for all by pretty much telling her outright that he's a scumbag, and if they stay together he'd just keep letting her down and screwing up. He's saying it because it's true, but he's ALSO saying it because he's about to take on a pretty good sized chunk of the CIA and doesn't want her around for it. Whether or not a reader thinks he would have said/done it if not for the whole CIA thing varies.

Joker Immunity: Zigzagged in one early issue, where Tommy actually gets hired to break into Arkham Asylum to assassinate The Joker (and accepts a bunch of other lesser contracts to off random psychoes there, and to kneecap the Mad Hatter). A number of Gotham police are forced to stand guard, even as they protest they don't want to stop Tommy from doing it, and Batman shows up to interfere because, despite his own wishes, a hitman murdering someone in a prison is still illegal. Not to mention Tommy is basically being used by some demons who seek to recruit him as an agent, and so if he does kill the Joker, they get his soul.

KnightsOfCerebus: The arc "Who Dares Wins" involves Tommy and Natt being doggedly hunted by a squad of SAS soldiers for a past Gulf Storm "friendly fire" incident. Multiple issues following dealt with both the character's horror at feeling completely outclassed by the soldiers and the blowback/collateral damage from the fight.

Nazi Grandpa: Teigel's (paternal) grandfather is a German Second World War veteran who likes to encourage Teigel and her mother to join him in singing Nazi songs. It's worth mentioning at this point that Teigel and her mother are black.

Nice Hat: Natt The Hat's hat. Over the course of the series it gets more and more damaged.

Nineties Anti-Hero: Parodied with Nightfist. A touch hypocritical, since Tommy himself can be seen as a less pretentious and more self-aware example of the breed. Still, Nightfist steals drugs from pushers and Tommy murders people for a living, is the point.

Right Behind Me: In JLA/Hitman, right when Batman starts ranting about how Tommy is scum and the lowest of the low, Superman walks in, shakes his hand, and greets him on a first-name basis.

The Rival: Tommy and Ringo. Whether it's played straight or subverted depends how far along in the story you are, what the stakes are, and what day of the week it is.

Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Every time a villain is dumb enough to kill off a main character, Tommy goes on one of these. The one in the epilogue of "The Old Dog" is particularly brutal/epic/terrible/justified.

Sole Survivor: Hacken is the only one of the core Noonan's crew to survive, although Baytor, McAllister, and Tiegel also live. Bueno Excellente is the only confirmed survivor of Section Eight, though Six Pack is also strongly implied to still be alive.

There's a pretty specific one at the expense of obscure superhero Gunfire in the DC One Million issue.

Title Drop: The "For Tomorrow" arc has a piece of dialogue by Ringo stating that most Hitmen live ...for tomorrow, meaning they long for the day when they can quit the business. Most of them don't, however, and die horrible deaths.

Too Spicy for Yog Sothoth: In one issue, a group time displaced T-Rex's are going around causing general havoc and destruction, and one of them eats Baytor...only to spit him back out a few moments later.

Johnny Navarone as well, though we don't see the actual torture, just the results.

Touched by Vorlons: Tommy gets his powers by surviving an attack by an alien that sucked out his spinal fluid.

True Companions: Tommy and the rest of the regulars that hang out at Sean's pub.

Wham Episode: Hitman had been around a bit before getting his own series, and for the bulk of that time, his appearances were played as Black Comedy. Then came the story's second arc, which looks to be playing Tonight Someone Dies and Black Dude Dies First for all they're worth, with Tommy's best friend he's never mentioned before showing up just in time for a new killer to target Tommy. For three issues, it's played for laughs still, right down to a gratuitous attack of ninja. Then Nat goes to the bathroom... and finds Tommy's best friend, Pat, in the tub, mutilated and bleeding out. It's implied that while Tommy and Nat were engaged in Bloody Hilarious fun these past few issues, the Big Bad was working over Pat the whole time. Tommy tearfully gives a Mercy Kill. The series still has funny moments, but this sets up that Anyone Can Die.

Wrong Genre Savvy: Hacken, in "Zombie Night at Gotham Aquarium," thinks he's in a traditional zombie movie, not a DC Universe "Weird Science run amok" story. It's a subtle distinction, but a costly one for Hacken.

Your Vampires Suck: Tommy shoots a vampire. It laughs, and heals. He shoots it a whole lot more. It can't heal fast enough to dodge the sunrise.

TV Tropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy